‘Old Age’ Films: Golden Retirement, Dispossession and Disturbance

Abstract

In its reliance on old age protagonists and storylines and a cohort of pensionable actors, an emerging cycle of British films (including Last Orders (2001), Iris (2001), The Mother (2003), The Queen (2006), The Iron Lady (2011), Quartet (2012) along with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) and its 2015 sequel) addresses many concerns related to the ageing population and ‘crisis of ageing’ discourse, whilst projecting certain troubling ideologies. In the play between cultural and generic verisimilitude, these films illuminate the inclusions and exclusions of the Thatcherite, neo-liberal, golden retirement dream in both pre- and post-crash contexts, whilst storylines and actors' ongoing careers combine to normalise the deferred retirement policies and extended working lives resulting from the 2008 banking crisis. This article argues that these films both utilise and disturb dominant stereotypes of old age. However, in turn, these disturbances are troublingly neo-colonialist, heteronormative and postfeminist.